Welcome

February 28, 2010

I'm ba-ack!Had an exhausting week in Yeovil. Builders were meant to be finished but were still in my way, carpet fitters were still fitting, curtain fitter wasn't fitting - eeek! lift stopped working for a whole day so I had to sell my soul to suppliers to get them to lug furniture up two flights of stairs (or three in some cases!) but we finally got it finished and I crawled home late on Friday night. After a long soak in the bath, catching up on much needed sleep and getting several loads of washing done I finally managed to squeeze in a quick not-a-tag book page. So, here is page 8

I cheated a bit as I had the background done already, and I just stamped the Lost Coast image on top of it, stuck a couple of felt leaves at the bottom and some beadazzles around the top and it was done. I did stick some gems on the top of her sceptre and in her crown as well. She is very sparkly so you can't see her that well. I love this stamp as it reminds me of my youngest DD when she was little. She was, and still is, the Princess of Everything LOL.

Off now to have a look see at what everyone has been up to while I've been away.... I notice Ms Linda E is still on cloud 9 from the Holtzmeister sighting!

February 21, 2010

Just a quick fly by posting as I frantically throw things in a suitcase! I'm off in a couple of hours to Yeovil for the completion of the major project at work. Won't be back until Friday night and won't have any internet access in the meantime :(
I shall miss t!m on QVC :( I shall miss this weeks WOYWW :( I shall miss the no doubt incoherent posting from Linda E when she gets back from meeting t!m :(
On the plus side, I am going to visit Creative Moments while I am in Yeovil. Not having a LSS is a pain, so it's always fun visiting somewhere there is one and having a rummage :)
I have packed my art journal, some watercolour pencils, Pitt pens, a glue stick, scissors and some bits of this and that so I can make some mess art if I get a chance in the evenings.
Catch up with you all next weekend (if I have any energy left!)

February 17, 2010

It is Wednesday, isn't it? Big project completing next week so I have been busy, busy, busy getting everything in place and have no idea where the time is going to! Anyway, I have been crafting, a little bit. I was looking at one of my new stamps, another Divine Missives one: The Gaze, and thinking I wished I could stamp it onto one of my backgrounds for my postage stamp book, but with the colours of the background showing through the main stamp and the flesh parts coloured in flesh. I could have messed around with acetate, but I didn't have any to hand. I did, however, have a piece of Safmat sitting there minding it's own business, so I decided to try that. Stamped the image in black stazon then coloured in the flesh with some blended prisma colour pencils. I'm quite pleased with it.

Crappy photo though - not my usual camera. I just snapped this quickly with my cheapie handbag camera as I was on the way out to work this morning so I could upload it during the day. I gave her a surround of gold Ferro stamped with some text and flourishes then, when that was dry swiped some precious metal paint in Copper over the top. Then I realised my fatal error...... I'd done it all upside down!!! So I used some of t!m's metal foliage to hide the original hole and I'll make a new one at the top.

I've followed instructions and taken some pics of what's around my desk. Here is a pic of the chest of drawers and the shelf unit balanced on the top of it that sits in the recess behind me, and the wall storage hanging thingy wotsits that are on the chimney breast beside me. All very messy, much like everything else around me!

February 14, 2010

This week I have been poorly sick. Started off on Monday with a bit of a throat lurgey thingy, but I had an urgent tender to get out (yes, another one! if one of them doesn't turn around after all the hard work I have put in I will scream!) so went in to work. Tuesday I was feeling even worse, but the tender still had work to be done on it, so I struggled in again and got sent home at lunchtime. I just crawled in to my bed and stayed there until Wednesday morning when I struggled in to work again and so on. Have spent most of the week just working and sleeping (with a bit of coughing and sniffing in between). Today I finally felt almost human again, so I had a play splurging around some inks and sparkly spray and dragging and dipping tags into it.

I had so much fun with those I decided to carry on with the same technique and make backgrounds for some of the stamp book pages I still have to complete. I also used some brilliance inks sprayed with plain water as they have enough sparkle of their own. You can't really see the depth of colour becuase the sparkle has picked up on the flash, but I just kept dipping and drying until I had the depth and layering I wanted.

I still had some ink left on my craft sheet so I dragged some of my art journal pages through it. Not so much depth of colour on these, but these pages already had some old text pages stuck in and gessoed, so there are layers there already.

I used up the last of the sparkly spray (water and cosmic shimmer powder) to spritz over a couple of other prepared art journal pages just to give them a bit of sparkle. Not much to show for a whole week is it?!! Actually, I have finally got around to completing my week 3 of 52 in 10, but it is very personal. I realised what was giving me so much trouble and why I was avoiding doing it, so I did it, but it isn't for sharing, not in public anyway. I have shown it to my DDs, but they are the only people who will see it, for now anyway.

Oh, I have finished (at least I think I have, for now) with my first ever proper page in my first ever proper art journal. It is a Moleskine sketch book now no longer all beautiful and blank. I have lots of prepared backgrounds and now, one complete double page... ta da

February 06, 2010

After another hectic week I got to relax today and finally got around to doing another couple of pages of my Maya Road postage stamp book. I've been dying to use this stamp, it's Rose from the Divine Missives range by Stampington. I'm a huge Rennie Mackintosh fan so I just had to have it. I stamped some other Mackintosh roses around the edge from a Circa Designs stamp in Brilliance inks and coloured in the roses and the vine on the main image with metallic pens. The whole tag was inked with Tattered Rose distress inks. So, this is page 5 and it looks much more sparkly in real life.

This is page 6. The flower, background and saying are Wendy Vecchi Studio 490 stamps (Art-fully Said). This is my first ever Wendy Vecchi stamp, I have another on back order. I blame Ms Elbournefor this latest addiction. To be honest, I didn't have to do much, these stamps are so stunning they don't need much else to complete the piece. The lighter butterfly is a Maya Road chipboard one coloured with Brilliance ink and a couple of pearls for the body, and the darker one is a fabric one with beads stitched on. I picked up a pack of them at an Ally Pally show, but can't remember which stand!